


Tough act to follow

by flugantamuso



Category: Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Gen, Humor, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:14:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flugantamuso/pseuds/flugantamuso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Bill, I don't know how to break this to you but no one wants to read about the adventures of Tweedledee, Tweedledum and their fifty cows, no matter how attractive Tweedledum is."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tough act to follow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HannaM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannaM/gifts).



_However, this was before Inigo's wound reopened; and Westley relapsed again; and Fezzik took the wrong turn; and Buttercup's horse threw a show. And the night behind them was filled with the crecendoing sound of pursuit....._

"Bill," said Hiram, looking in frustration at the manuscript, "this isn't going to fly. This is a fairy tale--it's meant for kids, for god's sake!"

"Well, what do you want me to do," I said, "what's wrong with it?"

Hiram sighed. He was a small man in shirtsleeves and suspenders, and right now sweat was building around his glasses and on the top of his head. That could have been because the air conditioner was broken. Could have been.

"Just, I don't know," he waved his hand around, "whip something up for them. Who knows, maybe eventually you'll write a sequel."

I stifled a laugh. "Yeah right. Morgenstern'll be turning over in his grave."

Hiram smiled. "Maybe, but don't count yourself out. You've got a shot here. Use it."

_***_

_Buttercup and Westley may have had many adventures on the 'Revenge' if Buttercup would have consented to stay._

_"You want me to be a what?" said Buttercup incredulously._

_"No, no my dove, my heart," said Westley, a little desperately, visions of the life he had planned for them slipping away from him with every twitch of Buttercup's perfect eyelashes. "You won't be a pirate, you'll be a..." inspiration struck, "Queen! You'll be a pirate queen," he finished triumphantly._

_"But, Westley," said Buttercup, a quiver in her voice, "I've never wanted to be a queen. I've spent three years preparing to be a queen and I hated every moment of it."_

_"Then what *do* you want," said Westley, disheartened._

_"I think," said Buttercup, thinking hard (a difficult thing for her) and out of habit attempting not to wrinkle her forehead as she did so, "I think that I'd like to have a farm."_

_Westley looked at her in disbelief. "A farm?" he repeated. "I get kidnapped by pirates and become the Dread Pirate Roberts, you become a princess, and all you want is to go back to the farm?"_

_"Not *the* farm," said Buttercup, "*Our* farm, one with cows and a horse. I would have been happy with just that you know," she added, "happy if you'd never left."_

_Westley dropped his head, defeated._

_And that is how the Dread Pirate Roberts and Queen Buttercup of Florin (they never did get around to getting the marriage annulled) settled down on a dairy farm on the far side of the Guilder border as far away from Florin as they could reasonably go. Predictably they argued a lot, though that did not diminish their happiness._

_Their neighbors were astonished at Buttercup's beauty, but as luck would have it Prince Humperdink (King Humperdink after King Lotharon finally passed on, much to Humperdink's annoyance) never discovered their location. This may have been due to the distraction of the forty year war that he had the satisfaction of waging against Guilder, or the frustration of his shipping being continually attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts (Florinese historians consider the siege the pirates laid to the Florinese shipping industry as one of the reasons that Florin eventually lost the war) or it may have simply been that he never would have thought to look for them on a dairy farm._

_So Buttercup and Westley, notwithstanding the war, which in later years devolved into a petty squabble involving fashion (which was finally beginning to be developed in that part of the world) lived (in)harmonious lives ever after._

_They did have a tiny adventure several years later when Inigo and Fezzik came to visit and brought the entire crew of the 'Revenge,' but that is an entirely different story._

***

Hiram put his head in his hands. "A milkmaid," he said, his voice muffled. "The end of a great adventure story; the most beautiful woman in the world and you make her a milkmaid."

I recrossed my legs which were starting to go numb. "Not a milkmaid, the owner of a moderately successful dairy farm."

Hiram groaned.

"Well," I continued, "what's wrong with that? Buttercup is a simple woman, she was happy with Westley the farmboy. Besides, don't you want to read about the pirates on the farm?"

He twitched. I'd gotten him. Of course he wanted to read about the pirates on the farm. Everyone wants to read about the pirates on the farm, but-----

"Bill, I don't know how to break this to you but no one wants to read about the adventures of Tweedledee, Tweedledum and their fifty cows, no matter how attractive Tweedledum is."

"Buttercup loses her looks eventually," I said.

"You're not helping," said Hiram. "Look, do you want a sequel or not?"

"Well," I started, but he interrupted.

"Just leave the ending open, ok? Hell, you can even go back to Morgenstern's original and it would be better than this crap."

I winced. "Low blow, Hiram. Low blow."

Hiram rested his chin on his hand. "Look, Bill," he said, "just leave the possibility there for yourself, ok?"

Eventually we compromised.

_Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs._

_But that doesn't mean I think they had a happy ending either. Because, in my opinion anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep because of Humperdink maybe being on the trail._

_I'm not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all._

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just about given up on writing something about William Goldman as a character and was happily writing about Westley and Buttercup and cows and visiting pirates (I actually wrote that part and then cut it out of the final draft) when it occurred to me that William Goldman has been trying to write a sequel to Princess Bride for years and has never had success with it because apparently he can't come up with a story idea. So maybe his story idea was as insipid to his editors as my dairy farm story was turning out to be. And then Hiram entered the story and voila, it just about wrote itself :)


End file.
